Social networking sites may “induce psychological stress”
Friday November 19th, 2010
Facebook could be bad for your health, doctors in Italy have claimed, after treating a teenager who suffered repeated asthma attacks when logging onto the site.
Five
Italian doctors, writing in Correspondence in The Lancet, have reported
the case of an 18-year-old man who suffered the attacks when he logged
on to his former girlfriend’s profile on the website.
The problems occurred after she reinstated him as a “friend” on the networking site following their break-up. The sight of her profile appeared to induce shortness of breath.
Dr Gennaro D'Amato, of the High Speciality Hospital A Cardarelli, Naples, said the teenager’s mother was advised to ask him to measure the peak expiratory flow before and after internet login.
“Indeed, ‘post-Facebook’ values were reduced, with a variability of more than 20 per cent,” he says.
Hyperventilation was triggered by seeing his former girlfriend's face and the doctors say that other possible environmental and infectious factors were excluded following a thorough history and physical examination.
Once the patient agreed not to use Facebook the asthma attacks stopped.
The doctors conclude: "This case indicates that Facebook, and social networks in general, could be a new source of psychological stress, representing a triggering factor for exacerbations in depressed asthmatic individuals. Considering the high prevalence of asthma, especially among young people, we suggest that this type of trigger be considered in the assessment of asthma exacerbations."
Meanwhile, research has claimed that action-packed video games such as Halo and Call of Duty can enhance visual attention, suggesting that they could be used to improve military training, educational approaches, and certain visual deficits.
Reviews of work, published in WIREs Cognitive Science, led by Dr Daphne Bavelier, of the University of Rochester, Minnesota, USA, focused on the impact video games have on visual attention.
Authors Bjorn Hubert-Wallander, Shawn Green and Bavelier reviewed studies where gamers and non-gamers had to perform tasks related to visual attention and found that gamers consistently outperformed their non game-playing peers.
However, fast-paced, action-based games that emphasised rapid responses to visual information and required divided attention seemed to be the only ones that affected attention specifically.
Green said: “At the core of these action video game-induced improvements appears to be a remarkable enhancement in the ability to flexibly and precisely control attention, a finding that could have a variety of real-world applications.
“For example, those in professions that demand "super-normal" visual attention, such as fighter pilots, would benefit enormously from enhanced visual attention, as their performance and lives depend on their ability to react quickly and accurately to primarily visual information."
Hubert-Wallander, B, Green, CS, & Bavelier, D. Stretching the limits of visual attention: The case of action video games. WIREs Cognitive Science, November 2010: DOI 10.1002/wcs.116
Tags: Allergies & Asthma | Europe | General Health | Infancy to Adolescence | Mental Health
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